Tag Archive for: producer

10 Musician Mistakes: You Don’t Have a Team

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We’ve all heard the term DIY – it’s been in practically every single indie music business article since the dawn of the 21st century. There are more tools available today than most artists know what to do with. You can be your own publisher, distributor, label, engineer, producer and marketer, and you can do it all from your room.

While it’s great that artists no longer have to do-it-with-a-big-record-label, perhaps DIY isn’t the best option either. There are a lot of artists out there with excellent business chops, but they’re still not experts. And they have more important things to do like creating music. You can’t be an expert in everything – there’s just not enough time in the day.  The key is to find and motivate people who are! Instead of DIY, move towards a do-it-with-others (DIWO) strategy.

Your team doesn’t even have to be seasoned pros. If you have a band you’re already way ahead of the game. Everyone has their own unique skills, so take advantage of that! One band member may be a math wiz. Put them in charge of the budget. They will keep track of the band’s income and expenses in a spreadsheet and be the voice of financial reason when it comes to spending money.

Another band member may be a people-person – they’re outgoing, confident, and not afraid to pitch your music passionately and enthusiastically. This person could be the face of the band when it comes to business and networking. It’s their job to call up the promoter, pitch your music for a publishing placement of sponsorship, and talk to the soundboard guy after the show.

Download my most popular ebook, Hack the Music Business, for free and get more indie musician strategies and case studies.

Let’s take a look at recent pop sensation, Betty Who.  Betty Who’s “Somebody Loves You” began drawing the attention of the pop music world after the release of her first EP The Movement in spring of 2013. In September 2013 the song was featured in a viral gay marriage proposal video and just a few days later she was signed to RCA Records.

Betty Who didn’t get where she is today on her own – she had a great team behind her the whole way. Producer Peter Thomas and manager Ethan Schiff attended Berklee College of Music with Betty Who. With Peter Thomas she was able to find and really latch onto her signature pop sound, and Schiff helped set her up on the business side of things.

Want to know the other 9 musician mistakes?

  1. You Don’t Have a Plan
  2. You Aren’t Leveraging Copyright
  3. You Skip Time Management
  4. You’re Not Out There Networking
  5. You Don’t Focus on a Niche
  6. You Don’t Let Your Fans Market
  7. You Don’t Have a Brand Strategy
  8. You Overuse Free Music
  9. You Don’t React to Opportunity

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The key take away here is that your team doesn’t have to be made up of top-of-the-line professionals that charge thousands of dollars for their time. Your team can start out as friends, classmates, and band members. These are the people who are really passionate about you and your music, and often passion is more important than money or connections. In the New Artist Model online course we teach you techniques to build a strong team to efficiently run your business and much more.

 

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Let’s Add Better Metadata to Our Digital Files

Why are artist, writer, producer, engineer and other credits almost always missing from iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Amazon, Rdio, and almost every other music service, with little exception? That’s the basis for a metadata movement being spearheaded by producer, mixer and engineer Count (aka Mikael Eldridge), whose ‘credits’ include artists like DJ Shadow, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, New Order, No Doubt, Galactic, Zoe Keating, and Tycho.

“If Led Zeppelin had only sold albums digitally when they started, it’s very unlikely that many people would know who Jimmy Page or Robert Plant are because the digital music files you purchase for download or streaming can’t show you who played on them.”

If you think performers, producers, and engineers should be credited on interactive music services like iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify, click here to ‘like’ this campaign.

Over the last few years we’ve seen an explosion in interactive music services. iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Soundcloud, and dozens of other platforms are touted as groundbreaking services, but if you really think about it, it’s all on the backs of the people who actually created the music; the performers, producers, and engineers. These services are nothing without music creators and at the very least they need to finally give music creators credit on screen.

There is no excuse. Its the right thing to do, it would create a much richer user experience, and it would improve these music services by turning people on to new music. That’s why myself and a crew of dedicated folks at the Grammys are tackling this issue once and for all. But we need your help to show there is real demand.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable that I can go online and instantly have access to Roger Federer’s obscure tennis stats but I can’t even see who is singing a song on iTunes or Pandora.”

There are many obvious reasons why credit must be given to music creators including:

(1) Better credits make better user experiences.

(2) This is Marketing 101.

(3) Hollywood does it, so why don’t we?

(4) This is not about egos. It’s about survival.

(5) It’s an easy fix.

Read the whole post from Count and Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News.

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